Reprinted from the July 28, 1998 issue of In These Times, a biweekly
newsmagazine based in Chicago

For decades, the Westinghouse Corporation disposed of its toxic waste
at several dump sites in Bloomington, Ind. In
the early '80s, the dumps came under the aegis of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's Superfund program. While negotiations with Westinghouse
over how to cleanup the waste dragged on for years, EPA, in order not to
upset the negotiations, kept from the public the fact that toxic air levels
near the sites were more than 15 times greater than the Superfund target
risk level. At the same time that EPA was secretly recommending to its
staff that they wear respiratory protection whenever on-site, it was assuring
the people of Bloomington that they were in no immediate danger.

This sort of behavior is symptomatic of the bigotry festering at the
core of EPA. In my 25 years with EPA, I have heard countless remarks and
witnessed many heartless actions denigrating environmental concerns, environmentalists,
environmental organizations and, most particularly, community environmental
activists. While for the outside world, EPA puts on a face of concern and
caring for the unfortunate victims of environmental pollution, the agency
is permeated with contempt for these same people.

This prejudice manifests itself in countless EPA actions: in decisions
to locate hazardous-waste facilities in already heavily polluted poor neighborhoods;
in Superfund cleanups that ignore community concerns in favor of giving
big bucks to favored contractors; in the agency's lax and corrupt enforcement
of regulations governing polluting industries; and in its suppression of
employees who advocate for the public interest.

Not all EPA employees are bigoted. In the early days, in fact, many
people joined the agency out of a strong environmental ethic. But 27 years
later, most of the idealists are long gone, having abandoned EPA in disillusionment.
They have been replaced by careerists whose environmental ethic, if it
exists at all, is subordinate to their ambition. This translates into blind
loyalty to the organization, regardless of whether it is right or wrong.
The Russians have a word for these people: apparatchiks.

In the minds of EPA personnel, the agency represents the public interest.
Since environmentalists and community activists also claim to represent
the public interest, EPA employees view them, in a sense, as competitors.
The instinctive reaction of these employees is to attack and eliminate
the competition. Hard-core, loud-mouth bigots are a small minority, but
a much larger majority passively shares many of the same views.

Congress and the White House have tended to view polluters, especially
the big corporations, the way the Salvation Army might regard a sinner:
"He's not really bad. He just needs to be reformed, shown the light and
set on the path of righteousness." This attitude filters down through all
levels of EPA.

EPA is soft on polluters for other reasons as well. EPA personnel are
much more comfortable with industry types, who are more likely than environmentalists
to share their cultural background and outlook. Many EPA staffers aspire
to high-paying corporate jobs through the "revolving doors" between government
and industry. For instance, former EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus
(a Republican) now works for waste hauler Browning-Ferris and former EPA
general counsel Joan Bernstein (a Democrat) works for Waste Management
Inc. It's not, however, just political appointees who make the leap. Literally
hundreds of career civil service EPA employees have left or retired from
the agency to work for the companies they once regulated.

Years of neglect and condescending treatment have made communities affected
by industrial pollution deeply skeptical of EPA's ability and desire to
help them. These poor and often minority communities have become more organized
and militant, forming literally thousands of grass-roots organizations
to contest EPA's handling of their environmental concerns.

These grass-roots groups include the Times Beach Action Group, contesting
EPA's incineration of dioxin-contaminated soil in Times Beach, Mo.; Mothers
Organized to Stop Environmental Sins, fighting to close a hazardous-waste
treatment facility in Winona, Texas; Citizens
Against Toxic Exposure, fighting EPA's botched handling of the "Mt. Dioxin"
Superfund site in Pensacola, Fla.; and the Ocean County Citizens for Clean
Water, documenting pollution-related childhood cancers in Toms River, N.J.

A score of professional environmental organizations have evolved to
assist and educate these communities. Organizations such as Communities
for a Better Environment in San Francisco, Southern Organizing Conference
for Environmental Justice in Atlanta, Citizens for a Better Environment
in Chicago, the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, and
the grand daddy of them all, Lois Gibbs' Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous
Waste in Washington, D.C. National organizations such as Greenpeace and
the Sierra Club have also actively supported the grass-roots movement.

EPA has tried to stem this tide by continually inventing new initiatives
of its own. Typically these efforts succeed in little more than spawning
new bureaucracies. At headquarters, we have the Complaints Resolution Staff,
the State and Community Outreach Staff, the Common Sense Initiative, the
Office of Environmental Justice, the Outreach/Special Projects Staff, the
Community Involvement Outreach Center, the Complaints Resolution and External
Compliance Staff, the Alternative Dispute Resolution Team and numerous
other communication and outreach branches. Every EPA regional office has
its own Environmental Justice Staff, Alternative Dispute Resolution staff,
Community Involvement staff and so forth.

While some of these initiatives, such as the National Environmental
Justice Advisory Committee, do good work, most of them are more palliatives
to blunt community outrage without changing the internal EPA policies that
cause the problems in the first place. This, ironically, produces the need
to create still more little bureaucracies.

One worthy EPA initiative is the Office of the Hazardous Waste Ombudsman,
created by Congress in 1984. Robert Martin, the ombudsman, has gotten EPA
regional Superfund directors to back down when citizens complained to him
about the agency's policies. For example, Martin successfully intervened
on behalf of the community in a dispute over a toxic dump site in Brio,
Texas, in which EPA's cleanup methods would have exposed the community
to more toxic chemicals than if EPA had done nothing at all. As a result
of such actions, Martin is held in high esteem by community activists and
is despised by the Superfund directors, who are more concerned with the
prosperity of Superfund contractors than with the health of the public.

But these success stories are often short-lived. When EPA Administrator
Carol Browner decided to augment the ombudsman function by creating 10
additional ombudsmen, one for each EPA region, many of the regional Superfund
directors undermined the plan by insisting that the regional ombudsmen
report to them rather than to Martin. Thus, EPA created a new "public outreach"
initiative to kill one of the few initiatives that worked.

In a meeting last year of these regional ombudsmen, which I attended,
participants bandied about disparaging and condescending remarks about
environmentalists and community activists. The head of EPA's Community
Involvement Outreach Center didn't interject. I'm used to hearing these
kinds of put-downs at internal EPA meetings, but I was taken aback to hear
them from the lips of the very people selected by EPA to investigate community
complaints. These attitudes obviously affect EPA policy. I later learned
from two different communities that one regional ombudsman was using his
office to isolate and discredit complainants rather than to address complaints.

EPA's cynicism and contempt for the public interest is not limited to
the regional offices or to the Superfund program but is part of the institutional
culture of the agency. The newspapers were recently full of stories about
Browner's struggle to win the administration's approval of tough new air
standards for ozone and particulates over the vociferous objections of
industry. The impression created in the press and fostered by industry
was of a zealous agency hell-bent on forcing these strong standards on
the country regardless of the consequences. Not mentioned was the fact
that the Clean Air Act of 1970 required EPA to review and, if necessary,
revise these standards every five years. EPA stopped doing so in 1979.
Only after it lost a lawsuit filed by the American Lung Association in
1991 and was under court order to act did EPA write the minimal standards
it thought it could get away with. The only zealousness shown by the agency
was in using taxpayer money to fight in court for their right to disobey
the law.

An EPA executive in charge of the Common Sense Initiative, founded to
bring together industry, state and environmental representatives to reform
EPA regulations, once commented to me--with a straight face--how much easier
it would be to reach a consensus if only the environmentalists weren't
involved.

EPA deals with its dismal environmental record the same way industry
deals with its pollution: not by changing what it does but by papering
problems over with slick PR. The only difference is that EPA uses taxpayer
money to pay for it.

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William Sanjour has been an employee of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency since the early '70s, originally as a manager in the
hazardous-waste office. In 1980, he testified before Congress on illegal
EPA efforts to quash hazardous-waste regulations. Agency officials retaliated
by transferring him to an office with no functions and no personnel. Since
then, Sanjour has actively helped environmental and community organizations
and has written numerous articles about environmental issues and EPA. In
spite of persistent harassment by the agency, he continues to work in the
public interest helping communities and his fellow whistleblowers. He is
on the advisory board of the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction
Network and the National Whistleblower Center, and is a fellow of the Environmental
Research Foundation. This article has not been submitted for EPA approval
and does not necessarily reflect the views of the agency.